


Lay Me Down (Pockets Full of Stones)

by PanBoleyn



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Character Death In Dream, M/M, Quentin Coldwater Lives, Suicidal Ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-09 11:54:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20853017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn
Summary: The world spins, and Quentin doesn’t even feel his knees buckle, or how his head hits the wall on the way down. All he knows is the fall into the quiet dark.In which Quentin survives the events of 4.13 by taking such bad care of himself he never actually makes it to the Mirror Realm. Also in which everyone loses him for a day, and Eliot is Not Happy about this.





	Lay Me Down (Pockets Full of Stones)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again! Have a oneshot while I work on the next chapter of _Into the Sky_! 
> 
> Minor warnings for the Monster being creepy with Q, but I think that's the only warning for this one. If anyone spots something I should have mentioned, let me know and I'll update my note accordingly. 
> 
> As ever, thanks and love to my RAO enablers (especially Maii for looking over my drafts)! <3

It all happens so fast, is the thing. One moment the Monster is staggering towards them, hand raised in an all too familiar gesture. Quentin is trying not to let the strange drugging effect of this place get to him, trying frantically to think of some way neither he or Penny ends up sliced down like so many people - 

And then Margo is there, swinging her axe into Eliot’s side and the Monster is a golden swirl of light flowing into the bottles. Quentin, for a moment, can only stare at Eliot sprawled on the ground, blood staining that awful shirt red, but then Penny is shaking his shoulder and he snaps out of it. They crouch over the bottle and when their phones buzz they begin casting.

It’s like no other feeling in the world, cooperative magic. You’re still you, but you’re little pieces of everyone else in the spell as well. And so as his hands move over and over in the tuts of the incorporate bond, Quentin has a flash of the Whitespire throne room, he sees a night sky in somewhere he doesn’t know is India, dozens of little fragments that mostly don’t make sense but swirl together into something beautiful. 

Into  _ magic _ , like he’d always wished it would be. 

Then they’re finished and Quentin looks up again. And the world fucking stops, because Margo is kneeling beside Eliot, hands pressed desperately to his side, blood bubbling up around her fingers. Quentin - Quentin wants to run to them, to help, he wants to run far far away because no, they can’t lose - Eliot can’t - not after all this - 

Since the Monster got the last stone, he’s been numb, and he’s welcomed it. But seeing this - it’s like he’s been hit with an axe too, and emotions are pouring back into him through the wound. And if Eliot dies, if he dies after all of this then Quentin is simply going to fly apart. He knows this, deep in his bones, but he can’t make himself move.

_ “Eliot!” _ Margo screams his name, then it comes out again, broken. “Eliot. If there's a tunnel with Grandma, tell her to piss off and come back to me, you selfish fuck! Get back here! Eliot.  Eliot, please.” 

Quentin is watching, frozen, most of his mind full of nothing but white noise but everything that isn’t is screaming with her.  _ Don’t you fucking dare, Eliot, don’t you dare, don’t you fucking make me bury you again. _

“Well, when you put it so sweetly, Bambi.” His voice is faint, strained, but it’s Eliot, it’s really Eliot like it had been that day in the park, something the Monster could never imitate even using the same vocal cords. Quentin closes his eyes in something like relief, and then there’s a hand on his back and the rushing feeling of traveling. 

He’s always a little light-headed after traveling, so Quentin thinks nothing of the fact that his head spins when he gets to his feet. Margo is yelling at the doctors as they get Eliot onto a stretcher, she’s racing with them as they wheel him away. Quentin sways uncertainly on his feet, feeling glued to the spot. He wants to stay here, wants to wait for Eliot to come out of surgery, wants to be here to hear any news. But he’d promised Alice they’d work as a team, didn’t he? And it would be a terrible way to start off their newly decided friendship to bail on her, wouldn’t it? 

_ “I want you in my life, Alice. But I think. Maybe as friends? We never really got to just be friends, did we?”  _

_ “No, we didn’t. I’d like that.”  _

So he should go. He said he would. Quentin’s pretty sure he hears Penny yelling at him to get going, but he can’t really hear him. 

_ “If you’re trying to tell me that it gets better -” _

_ “God, no, no, it doesn’t. I’m trying to tell you, you are not alone here.” _

Eliot said that, back when they were only barely friends, and maybe he hadn’t meant it as a promise but it had somehow ended up one, he’d kept it until he died once, and so Quentin should stay with him, shouldn’t leave him now, especially when all he wants is to be here. But Eliot has Margo, surely when he wakes he’ll need Margo more than he’d ever need Quentin, Alice and 23 are going somewhere dangerous but Quentin’s not much good in a fight anyway. Even with his discipline, what about repair of small objects is good in a fight? 

He sways again on his feet that seem strangely stuck to the ground, and he can’t hear 23 yelling at him anymore. Quentin looks around, and the hallway is empty except for him. Huh. That’s… that’s strange, isn’t it? There’s something… But he’s so tired, maybe if he just sat down for a moment, no one would mind, no one would blame him? 

That’s when he realizes he can’t taste almonds on his tongue anymore. Ever since they realized they had to get the last stone before the Monster did, Quentin’s been drinking a potion meant to keep the mind clear, give a person energy. The trouble is, you have to drink it at the same time, every day, which is why it makes you taste almonds until it wears off. You need to know when it’s fading, because once it wears off, once it wears off… 

Something happens, right? 

Something. But he can’t taste almonds anymore, and that means it wore off, and that means - 

The world spins, and Quentin doesn’t even feel his knees buckle, or how his head hits the wall on the way down. All he knows is the fall into the quiet dark.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


“Coldwater’s staying with Margo to hear about Eliot,” 23 says, and he doesn’t mention how shellshocked Coldwater had looked or the heartbreak and fear in his head, screaming with his thoughts at Eliot every bit as loudly as Margo had screamed with her voice. 

He means this silence to be a kindness, actually - he may not like Coldwater but he knows what love feels like and he understands heartbreak too, he has the basic decency not to go throwing around other people’s feelings like that. On the whole though, in this case, less discretion may have been crueler but wiser. 

Alice is a little hurt, but she remembers what she overheard in the Brakebills library, and isn’t surprised. And, also, relieved - Quentin in a high-risk situation is sometimes a problem. Ever practical, she asks Kady to come with them instead, which is how Everett is shot moments before he can break the Seam-mirror, all the magic in him spilling back out with his death.

Sam’s gun does indeed come in handy. 

Julia is too lost to her own thoughts to question Penny about Quentin, and anyway, he’d barely thought of anyone but Eliot in recent months, so it makes sense to her. Margo has no idea Quentin isn’t with the rest of them and, sitting with Eliot waiting for him to wake up, doesn’t really think to ask. It doesn’t occur to Julia that Quentin loves her too, and would have checked in at least by text if he was sitting with Eliot, and it doesn’t occur to Margo that nothing but being  _ incapable  _ would stop Quentin from waiting for Eliot with her. 

It doesn’t occur to anyone because since they came back from lives that weren’t theirs, Quentin has drifted on the edges until they need him, or until the Monster drags him off to another quest or nightmare. It’s not malice, not really. Just carelessness in the face of so many problems, and Quentin let them do it, because he didn’t want to cause a fuss, and especially didn’t want anyone to ask too many questions. Not when he can’t answer them, not when the only way he has left to respect the no he was once given is to never tell anyone about that particular wish of his heart again. 

The healer student who finds Quentin Coldwater crumpled on the infirmary floor, quiet and still, doesn’t know any of this. He just knows he has another patient.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


The first thing Eliot is aware of is that he feels like shit. Which, actually, is probably a good thing. Sensation was muted in his Happy Place, and he never felt bad, so the fact that he aches all over and has a very nasty pain in his side suggests that - 

Margo screaming his name, begging him to come back to her. Looking wildly for Quentin, seeing him there with his eyes closed and tears on his cheeks. Then bright lights and now… Eliot blinks dry eyes up at a white ceiling. Oh. Hospital. Probably Brakebills’ infirmary. That makes sense. Someone is holding his hand, and he turns his head slowly, blinking in the light. 

Margo is dozing in a chair by his bed, her fingers still curled round his in sleep. For a moment, Eliot just drinks in the sight of her - even without being awake, there’s a… a vibrance to the real Margo that none of his memory versions could ever conjure up no matter how technically accurate they might have been. He’s so glad to see her he could cry, but he tries not to wake her up. He can guess sleep has been in short supply for their group lately. 

He’s so glad to see her, but the warmth of her hand in his, the sight of her curled in a chair, also only makes him more aware that his other hand is free. And when he turns his head, there’s another chair, but it’s empty. Eliot… maybe it had been selfish to expect it, but he’d spent a lot of time holding onto the idea of waking up himself again to find both Margo and Q there. Maybe Q just went for coffee or something? 

“Eliot!” Eliot looks back over to see Margo sitting upright, blinking sleep from her eyes. “Oh, God. El.” She whacks his shoulder, lightly. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again, you bastard.” The words are harsh but her eyes are shining, and Eliot knows her too well to misunderstand anyway.

Eliot opens his mouth and tries to speak, but his throat is too dry and all that comes out is an unintelligible croak. “Shit, hang on,” Margo says, reaching for a plastic cup and pitcher on the little rolling table all hospital rooms seem to have. Eliot sees a little flash of light around the fingers Margo’s holding the cup with, and when she helps him to sit up and drink it the water is colder than he might have expected. He’s always loved that little trick of hers. 

“How long was I out?” he asks as she’s easing him back to lie down. 

Margo checks the clock on the wall. “Not quite a full day since they put you in here after. I don’t know how long you were in surgery, could have been years. Felt like years. I didn’t mean to hit so far down, I was going to aim for your arm or shoulder or something, fewer vital organs, but then... It was about to kill Q or Penny, so I had to hurry.” 

“Yes. Yes, you did,” Eliot agrees, and he thinks he remembers that, actually. Something about the strange daze the Monster had been in had let him sort of - glimpse what was happening in real time, instead of the snippets he’d collected while trying to find out the Monster’s history. He doesn’t really want to think about those snippets, but he has to, because he woke up with Margo here and Quentin not, and the memories he doesn’t want to think about are - 

_ \- a scream as with a gesture, he snaps Quentin’s arm - _

_ \- Quentin flying into a wall - _

_ \- his hands on Q’s throat and Quentin doesn’t even look afraid, just angry and empty - _

_ \- he’s holding Q close and he doesn’t seem to be hurting him, he’s… petting him, but Eliot’s never seen Quentin look so broken, what did this thing do? - _

“Bambi, where’s Q?” he asks, and his voice is too rough for the way it shakes to really be obvious, thank God. Margo’s shrug is… not comforting, exactly, but she doesn’t look upset by the question which does make Eliot’s fear ease slightly. It makes the hurt worse, though. Rotten luck, there. 

“After we got you here, Q went with 23 and Alice to the Mirror World - oh, and apparently Kady went too, though that wasn’t the original plan, no idea why she went - to dump those fucking Twins into a place called the Seam. Some kind of magical black hole, but anyway, Alice knew the way, Penny had the right sigil, and Q didn’t say anything but Alice said she thought it’d be good for him to see them go. Whatever.” 

Margo shrugs, fiddling with the ends of her hair. “I figured he’d come back but he looked pretty tired, maybe he fell asleep or something before he could. You know him, he’s like a cat, if he’s tired enough he probably sat down for a second and conked out. It’s all over, though. 23 popped back in for like a minute, I was waiting outside the OR so he left a note at the receptionist’s desk. All the bad guys are dead with no major problems for fucking once.”

Eliot tries not to feel hurt about that. Quentin had already looked tired that day in the park, so if he’s sleeping then that’s a good thing. Eliot wants to see him, desperately, but - “Oh. I just, I need to talk to him. It’s kind of important, but not exactly urgent, because it’s not something that’s going to change.”

Before Margo can answer, Dr. Lipson walks in and the next twenty minutes are taken up by Eliot answering her questions about how he feels, her doing a check-up on his wound and his vitals, and then another thirty minutes for what looks like very delicate spellwork. 

“Because I had to treat you the mundane way to start, there’s some spells to accelerate healing I can’t use now, not for a while at least,” Lipson explains. “If I do, your body will heal over the stitches, which you do not want. Once I can safely remove them I can speed things up again. There’s also nerve damage in your leg that’s resisting spells, I noticed that last night once magic was back on, but it looks like it will heal on its own, given time.” 

Great. What the hell did that thing do to his leg? Eliot thinks he might vaguely be aware of… something at the Library, pain the Monster ignored, but it’s not very clear. Some kind of battle magic? It probably doesn’t matter how it happened, really. “How long do I have to stay here?” 

“At least a few more days, Mr. Waugh. I want to monitor you more closely than I might have needed to had I been able to treat you magically to begin with.”

“Great,” Eliot mutters, but really, he’s mostly griping to gripe. A few days in the hospital is far from the worst-case scenario he could have faced upon coming back to himself. For example, it had occurred to him that if his friends gave up and banished the Monster with it still in his body, it might have taken centuries before he was himself again. And at that point, why would he want to be?

There are other things he had been afraid he might wake up to, but that one’s the - in a way the least horrible because it’s the least personal, so there’s that. 

Margo pats his knee, and he rolls his eyes at her. Lipson leaves them alone, and Eliot lets Margo tell him all about how she got her axes, her trippy desert visions led by a very interesting version of Eliot himself. It’s kind of a hilarious image, though Margo getting herself deposed to save him is not. He hugs her for that, carefully so he doesn’t rip his stitches, and they both pretend they aren’t crying. 

“And then I got here and they’d lost you, and shit just went fucking crazy. I almost punched Josh in the face for suggesting we had to consider you dying an acceptable risk, hell, I’d have punched all of ‘em because no one was arguing till your boy spoke up. I don’t know what happened with Q while I was gone but he was dead fucking serious that  _ wasn’t  _ acceptable. And it shut everyone up so I wasn’t complaining.”

His boy. Not really, Eliot fucked that one up, but he’s supposed to be fixing that. “Speaking of Q, Margo… I know the infirmary has phones, think you could go call, see if he’s up? I’d do it but I can’t get up, and I’d really like to see him.” 

“I don’t really want to leave you yet,” Margo admits, looking a little guilty. Eliot gets that, really he does, in her shoes he’d feel the same way, it’s just… It’s Quentin. And she’d only have to leave for a few minutes. 

“Margo, please -” Eliot stops talking abruptly at a knock on the door, brisk and sharp. Not Quentin, he’s all but certain just from the sound of the knock but maybe Quentin is with whoever it is? 

“Come in,” Margo calls, and it’s Alice of all people on the threshold, which Eliot did not expect. 

“Hey,” she says, closing the door behind her but hovering near it. Her glance takes in the room and there’s a little furrow between her brows, which is strange, but Eliot doesn’t really care. 

“We’re really not mad at you anymore?” he asks, remembering the keys, the Library. Alice, for her part, meets his narrow-eyed glare steadily and he’s gotta give her credit for that, remembering a skittish angry first-year who either snapped or fled. 

“Well, you can stay mad at me if you want, but I’ve been on an apology tour, pretty much,” she explains, “and I did help get rid of the Monster Twins, so I’d like to think I’m on my way to fixing things. Anyway, we thought you guys might want a more detailed update on what’s going on.” She glances around the room again as if expecting something or someone who isn’t there, and Eliot suddenly has a very bad feeling. 

“Well, why are you here and not Q?” Margo asks before Eliot can. 

“Because Q is here with you?” Alice says slowly, like this is obvious. “Where is he, anyway, did he go for food or something?” 

“Alice, Quentin left with 23 to go to the Seam with you,” Margo says.

“No, 23 said he decided to stay and wait with you for Eliot to wake up.” 

“But -” 

“OK!” Eliot snaps, voice cracking in his still-dry throat but the barely held back anger is obvious. If it wasn’t, the way the furniture rattles would make it very, very clear. “Why don’t we stop arguing about where Q isn’t and find out where the fuck he is?” Because if he’s not here, and he’s not at the safehouse apartment Margo said Kady somehow acquired, then all Eliot can think is that something must be really, really wrong. 

<><><>

  
  


Quentin dreams of dying. 

His dreams are usually vague, hazy things - except when they're memories, but the memories he dreams of most are bittersweet at best now and so he tries not to think of that - but these are sharp, almost too vivid. 

_ He’s in the park, mind still ringing with the words  _ ** _“Peaches and plums, motherfucker, I’m alive in here,”_ ** _ when the body in his arms shifts and it’s the Monster staring at him out of Eliot’s eyes. The Monster’s eyes, narrowed and angry and oh fuck it knows -  _

_ It’s quick, at least. Quentin barely feels the pain of the slash across his throat, and then everything is gone.  _

No, it didn’t happen like that, but maybe it happened like this.

_ There are hands tightening around his throat, familiar hands he remembers touching him gently, fingers curled round the back of his neck to keep him close and never to hurt him. Amber-gold eyes that are flat and empty now, and Quentin closes his own because if the last thing he sees is Eliot’s eyes it will be the memory of his real eyes, not the mockery that is the Monster behind them.  _

_ “Well, that was fucking stupid, Coldwater,” says a familiar voice, and Quentin opens his eyes to find himself in an elevator, the doors open to reveal Penny. “Though I can’t blame you. You wanna wait, though? Cause I hate to tell you, that thing’s gonna OD soon and then…”  _

_ And Quentin hates that, he hates it, and when Penny comes back to his office, after leaving him alone there, with Eliot in tow Quentin hates that Eliot is here but oh God, he missed him. And they’re both ghosts so it feels the same when Eliot hugs him, and he can’t -  _

_ “I’m sorry, I tried, El, I’m so sorry.”  _

_ But he doesn’t get an answer, because it didn’t happen like that either. _

Maybe it happens like this? 

_ Quentin and Alice are facing the Sister, and she tilts her head at Quentin. “You’re my brother’s pet, the one that made him weak. I can’t have that.”  _

_ And she’s not as kind as her brother was in that other might-have-been; the slash across his chest is deep but it takes time, Quentin sprawled on the ground and choking on his own blood with Alice trying to stop the bleeding.  _

Except. No. Not like that either. But almost, almost like this.

_ The last thing Quentin sees is Alice’s horrified face and he’s sorry, he is, really, but the Seam needed to be mended and he could do it. He knows what happens when you cast in the Mirror World, he knows he should run, but he doesn’t. He’s too tired, his feet are stuck to the ground, and he lets his own magic eat him alive.  _

_ “Did I do something brave to save my friends or did I finally find a way to kill myself?” he asks Penny, and the ‘deluxe package’ Penny talked about turns out to be seeing his friends burn mementos of him and sing - _

“Hey, Kady wouldn’t pick a song like that for a funeral, I’m offended on her behalf, Coldwater.” 

Quentin blinks, and he’s in the elevator again, only the lights are dimmed - he’s been in an elevator caught between floors before, those are service lights, who stopped the elevator? 

“You stopped the elevator,” Penny says, and Quentin turns to look at him. He’s in his Library-grey suit, he’s looking at Quentin more kindly than he thinks he’s ever seen from Penny before, which is weird. Penny continues, “You were supposed to die, actually. Your book kept shifting but it always had your ending coming soon. And you managed to actually save your own life by taking such bad care of yourself that you passed out before you could die.” 

That… actually sounds like the kind of thing that would happen to him, Quentin reflects, and he remembers now, the taste of almonds faded from his mouth, the room spinning around him as he fell. “Uh… Well, I’m glad it worked?” He thinks he is, anyway, he knows he should be. He doesn’t - want to die, or at least he doesn’t want to want to, but mostly he’s just tired and wants to rest however he can. If dying’s the only way, well. 

“Jesus, no, dying is not the only way to rest, what the hell, Quentin?” Penny snaps, and Quentin thought his wards were getting better but apparently not. “I know our friends were being more clueless than usual and didn’t notice you were slipping, man, but you don’t want to quit like that, not now. For one thing, Eliot’s back, and I have it on good authority he asks for you as soon as he can.” 

“You mean his book.” 

“I mean his book. And yours. Because your ending’s backed off again, Quentin. You didn’t get through unscathed or you wouldn’t be here, but you got through. Now this is as far as I go, so hit the damned up button, will you?” 

So Quentin does, and Penny vanishes as if he’d never been there. The elevator rises and Quentin leans back against the cool metal wall, waiting to wake up. He wonders if anyone will even be there, he doesn’t think anyone was there when he fell. No one sees him anymore, except when they need him. Alice had sort of half noticed he wasn’t doing well, the Monster out of everyone had apparently noticed, but… 

He’ll probably be alone when he wakes up even if Eliot is asking for him somewhere else. Quentin doesn’t feel anything but tired, thinking of that. He’s used to it by now, after all.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot expects Alice to go with Margo when she leaves to ask if any of the healers saw where Quentin went - as good a place to start as any, because they know he was here at the infirmary. But Alice doesn’t leave, her hands knotting together as she watches him. “So, we’re really not mad at you about the keys anymore?” Eliot confirms. Alice’s mouth twists, and she shrugs. 

“Hard to tell. 23 doesn’t seem to care either way, I’m pretty sure Julia and I are square because I got her something she needed, I’m good with Kady and Quentin. Margo’s decided I’m tolerable because I helped get you back, but that’s all she ever thought of me anyway so I’m calling it a win.” 

That is actually not the case - Margo had rather liked Alice, or at least been intrigued by her, at the very beginning. But the fact that Alice seems to think otherwise explains a few things that Eliot doesn’t really care about anymore but had made him curious at the time. It also helps explain Alice and Quentin, because - he remembers Quentin, drunk on a cocktail Eliot gave him, blinking up at Eliot and Margo with huge eyes and asking if they actually liked him or if they just thought it was funny to mess with him. 

Two high-strung nerds who both found it hard to believe people liked them. Yeah, that explains a few things he’d never quite caught before. And Eliot - it’s the least important thing right now, when they can’t even find Quentin, but he has to know, and so. “When you say you and Quentin are good…” 

Alice rolls her eyes and mutters something about blind idiots Eliot doesn’t quite catch. “We’re not hooking up again,” she says. “His idea, not mine, but if he’d offered I’d have turned him down after - some things I’d heard him say. Not about me, but that made it pretty clear I’d be a second choice, which I won’t stand for. But, Eliot, that isn’t why - I wasn’t ignoring him, I really thought he was here.”

_ I’m worried too _ , she doesn’t say, but Eliot can see it, and he backs off, a little. “Margo said you’re the one who figured out how to make sure her axes worked?” At Alice’s nod, he sighs. “OK then. We’re good as far as the keys go.”

They lapse into silence after that. Eliot believes Alice when she says that she thought Quentin was here; the little argument between her and Margo proved that nicely. That isn’t the problem. The problem is that it took them so long to notice, how did it take them so long to notice? What has he missed? “How the hell did no one realize he was missing?” he says aloud, only half noticing that he has. 

Alice shrugs. “He hasn’t been doing all that well. Truthfully, if he didn’t promise that whatever we did, we’d do as a team, I wouldn’t have let him plan to come to the Seam with us at all. I wasn’t here, I didn’t see much, but the Monster, it liked him. He was wearing himself out trying to get you back, I’ve seen… well. I’ve sort of seen him like that before, though like everything else from when I was a Niffin it’s hazy. I don’t -” 

The door opens and Margo comes back in, looking unsettled. “So. Eliot. I’m going to need you to remember you can’t fucking walk without opening your stitches, OK?” 

“Yeah, Bambi, I don’t like the sound of that. Spit it out please.” He already didn’t like the sound of what Alice had been saying, and now this?

“Q’s here. At the infirmary. He’s a patient too. Some healer student found him passed out on the floor, he hit his head on the way down. Lipson said she thought we knew he was here, apparently it was exhaustion and potion backlash, he’s been downing that one, you know the keep-awake potion that tastes like almonds? It wore off and he was already pretty drained so he just dropped, they said.” 

Eliot takes a deep breath. Then another one. It doesn’t help. “You’re telling me that Quentin wore himself down enough to fucking collapse and  _ no one noticed _ ?” The furniture in the room is rattling again. He should probably try and make that stop. He really doesn’t feel like it. Alice and Margo look at each other, then back at him. Margo opens her mouth, then closes it,  _ Margo  _ of all people at a loss for fucking words. 

The window cracks, one long line a diagonal slash from left to right. “How the fuck did that happen?” Eliot hisses, and his nails are too long when his fingers curl into fists, he can actually feel them cutting into his palms and he doesn’t care because the tiny sharp pains help him to not lose control completely. 

And then he remembers something, vividly, from the Monster’s memories.  _ Quentin doesn’t look the same, he’s even easier to move than he was before, he’s so lightweight, but the skin under his eyes is dark and he’s so quiet, what’s wrong with him?  _

The fucking Monster that was causing so much pain for Quentin knew something was wrong, but if Quentin could keep going until he literally collapsed without anyone noticing, then all Eliot can think is that no one else even knew that much. No one noticed or they noticed and they didn’t care. 

“I just got back a few days ago, I don’t know -” Margo begins. 

“You didn’t take five minutes to check in? From what you were telling me, there was downtime, Margo,” Eliot says, then looks at Alice. “You told me the two of you were friends again, that you knew he wasn’t doing well. But you let a whole day go by before checking in?”

“23 said he stayed here, I assumed he was waiting with Margo.” 

“Speaking of that, what the fuck was he thinking?” Margo puts in. “I mean, did Q say he was gonna stay here instead and then just… never made it to catch up with me, or what the fuck?” 

“I don’t know, 23 didn’t - we were moving quickly, we didn’t know how long the bonds would hold, all he said was that Q was staying here instead,” Alice says, twisting her hands together. “But you said he was taking a potion?” 

“Yeah,” Margo says with a sigh. “I never took it but I knew kids who did during finals - you didn’t, right, El?” 

No, he hadn’t, but he had considered it. Except he’d been smart and seen the kids who took it sprawled around the Cottage after his first semester, sleeping it off in the first place they found to lie down. Mostly the kids who became part of the third year class that went missing in Fillory, now he thinks about it. “No, but it knocked people out once it was done.”  _ Quentin, what the fuck,  _ Eliot can’t help but think.  _ What did you do to yourself? _

“It hits hard,” Alice says. “It can also impair judgment, at the end especially. Quentin’s mind and body had probably just had enough, maybe 23 took it for shock, or worry about you, Eliot? I don’t know.” 

Eliot - doesn’t care. He doesn’t care what they didn’t know, what they think happened, because what does it matter now? “I want him in here,” he says flatly. 

“El -” Margo starts. 

“These beds have fucking wheels, don’t they? I want him in here with me, or I’ll risk tearing my stitches to go find him,” Eliot says, and he can see the moment Margo realizes he is dead serious about this. Which is good, because now she’ll bully the healers into it for his sake if not for Quentin’s. Eliot can’t do much from a hospital bed of his own, but he can make damn sure that when Quentin wakes up, he’s not alone. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


He’s moving, Quentin knows that much. He can feel it, like he’s a little kid and it’s his turn in the wagon, he used to like to lie in it and watch the sky and the trees go by. His eyes are only a little open, he doesn’t see much but white, moving fluorescent lights. 

There’s voices, familiar voices but he’s too tired to pick them apart from jumbled sounds. Someone sounds angry, someone else sounds upset… 

Quentin slips under again, into a dark that’s soft this time, a safe place to rest. He thinks, distantly, that he’s moving again, that there’s a hand in his hair, but he’s too far gone to see what’s going on.

He sleeps again, warm and safe and dreamless this time.

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Eliot takes one look at Quentin lying quietly on his back in his own hospital bed, and he wants to break more than just the window. Because he - the shadows under Quentin’s eyes are so dark, he’s so fucking pale and though he’s mostly covered by a white blanket the hollowed look of his face alone is enough to speak to how much weight he’s lost. 

He wants to start yelling again, but when he snaps, “Oh, and he looked like  _ that  _ but he was fine? Really?” Quentin stirs just a little, making a soft distressed sound, and Eliot clenches his jaw. The bedside table rattles again, but that’s all. He’s just - he’s furious, and he’s still stuck in this bed so he’s almost helpless, and that makes it all worse. 

Alice doesn’t stay. She says something about wanting to fill in everyone else, and, Eliot suspects, she plans to demand some answers from 23. Eliot would like a few answers himself, but not from 23, really. He’s willing to consider that a misunderstanding based on the fact that 23 pretty much hated Quentin from the word go, and so barely knows him. Eliot never expected  _ him  _ to care. But it doesn’t matter, he supposes. Alice leaves, but Margo stays, something brittle in her stubbornness and Eliot - 

“Tell me he didn’t look this bad when you came back,” Eliot asks, because he doesn’t want to be mad at Margo. Looking at Quentin lying there like that - when Eliot knows Quentin sleeps curled up on his side usually, and is kind of a restless sleeper - he wants to be angry at everything, but it’s Margo. She’s, she’s one of two exceptions to everything, it’s just that the reason he’s angry is the other exception. 

“He didn’t. I mean - you know Q and his layers, I noticed his clothes were looser but not like this. He didn’t look this tired, though. Maybe he wasted some ambient on a glamour, or he stole someone’s concealer? I don’t know. But I swear, he didn’t look like  _ this _ .” 

That sounds like more effort than Quentin usually spends on hiding his run-down appearance when he’s in one of his spirals, but Eliot remembers a time when Teddy had been eleven, old enough to understand more. Quentin had put in an effort then, what little energy he could dredge up going to hiding his struggle from their son as much as he could. This time… Eliot doesn’t know enough about what he missed to be sure. But he knows Quentin can hide his spiraling when he’s sufficiently motivated. Quentin is a terrible liar unless he’s bluffing at cards and not much better an actor, so it never fooled Eliot, but… 

Well, he wasn’t here and that’s part of the whole fucking problem, isn’t it? 

Eliot carefully eases himself up to a sitting position, pushing the button on the side of the bed that raises it so he can lean back. Whatever Lipson did helped his stomach wound along enough that he can move without it being too much, but it still hurts. “OK, I believe you,” he tells Margo, and it’s a little bit of a lie but he wants to believe that Margo at least made an honest mistake. He doesn’t want to be angry with her.

He feels like shit, but magic is at his fingertips, almost unaffected by his body. So it’s easy to make a beckoning gesture with his fingers, rolling Quentin’s bed over until it’s against his and then locking the wheels so that they’re basically in the same bed. Quentin makes another faint sound when Eliot does that, but he’s still sound asleep. 

“Is that a good idea?” Margo asks. 

“I don’t really care,” Eliot tells her, reaching over to brush his hand over Quentin’s too-short hair. He can feel the weight of Margo’s gaze, and he knows the wariness born of how they all managed to fuck up enough to lose track of Q isn’t going to last much longer. 

And sure enough, it’s just a few quiet minutes later when Margo says, “So what’s the deal here? I know how much he’s always meant to you, El, but this feels… more.” 

Eliot’s last memory from their life that never was is watching through half-closed eyes as Quentin putters around, both of them ancient. He feels that age now in his tired bones, sees it in the way Quentin’s face is drawn and pale even in his sleep. The hell they’ve been through is calling up the old men they were.

“It is more,” he says, looking away from Quentin to meet Margo’s eyes. “Do you remember - that letter you gave us, that Quentin wrote to you from the Mosaic?”

“That whole thing where you were both dead but Q promised you had a good life? I stopped that timeline from ever happening, El.”

Eliot takes a deep breath and wonders why this is so hard to tell even Margo. Margo, who sat with him on a roof in their last Trial, the pair of them spilling secrets like promises, a binding between them stronger than any spell to bind them might have been. But it  _ is  _ hard to tell her, to explain the weight of a life, to… 

He slides his fingers into Quentin’s hair and leaves them there. Quentin’s hair is soft and familiar against Eliot’s skin, the heat of Quentin’s body warm against his palm. And it helps, actually. The memory versions hadn’t been the same, he thinks. It had played on a loop, that lazy summer day with Margo, and if Charlton hadn’t interrupted the last one a Memory Quentin would have arrived. A Q with his first year clothes and hair long as it had been the day they went to the Mosaic, who sat on the floor by the couch and let Eliot play with his hair while talking to Margo. Memory Margo had been just a little too soft around the edges, no scent of hair product or perfume, while Memory Quentin had been oddly cool to the touch, a little too quiet. 

“You did… maybe, maybe not.” Eliot had access to castle records. He could have looked for Teddy, for the grandkids, he could have found proof that it was all real. He hadn’t, because he’d been trying to repress it and because he knew it would break him if he found nothing. “I don’t know exactly. I think it might be more like the time loops, how we found out they all still exist in their own right, but that’s not the - the point is that Q and I remember our life there.” 

Margo blinks. “Holy fuck. So you’re, what, old men in your twenty-something bodies?” 

“Eh,” Eliot says, shrugging. “Yes and no, that’s still not really… We were a family, we had a son, we got  _ married _ , Bambi.” 

“What.” Margo is staring unabashedly at him, eyes wide, mouth a little open. “Eliot, what - wait. You married the boy you’ve been fucking gone over since day one, but you’re not together now? Or at least, you better fucking not be, because not telling me about alternate lifetime marriage is one thing but if you were actually dating here and didn’t tell me I will kick both your asses.”

“No, we -” Eliot explains, then, about Arielle and Teddy, how Quentin had only gotten involved with Arielle after Eliot had broken things off, the tangled mess they’d been until Arielle got fed up and left. How he and Quentin had come slowly back together, and gotten married when Teddy was twelve - one of them had told Teddy about the Earth tradition of rice or flower petals being tossed at the newlyweds, which is how Quentin and Eliot ended their wedding ceremony with their son tossing bright autumn leaves at them. 

And then he explains how self-sabotage made a grand return back in the present, in the throne room under the arch where Margo was supposed to get married. 

“Well. Fuck,” Margo says when he’s done. 

“That sums it up,” Eliot agrees. “And that’s the memory I had to revisit to break out - they told you I broke out, right?” 

“Yeah. Damn fucking good timing too, apparently the Monster lied to Q and told him you were dead, they were about ten seconds from banishing you back to Blackspire. But you broke out and then Q sabotaged the banishing ritual.”

Fuck. Eliot hadn’t known how close he’d cut it. The last thing he remembers is feeling Quentin grab him, and then he’d been back in the Happy Place. That must be the sabotage Margo’s talking about. “That was good timing,” he says. “But I - I promised him. Well, the memory version, and sort of the real one, because what I told him to prove it was me was quoting back at him what he’d said to argue we should try for real. Not sure that part got across, but it was all I had time for.” 

“Hey. You’ve got time. Unless…” Margo looks away. “I’m gonna try to get unbanished, I’m guessing you probably figured that out. Are you - I could really use your help, once you’re feeling better, but if you’re…” 

“I have to talk to him first, and for all I know he’s going to tell me to go fuck myself,” Eliot points out. “But, if all goes well, once we’re both back on our feet… I’ll talk to him. I’m not sure I still belong in Fillory give how decisively I was voted out, but we can try it. See how it goes.”

He can tell that’s not quite the answer she’d hoped for, but she doesn’t look surprised either. And, truthfully, it’s the best Eliot has to offer, just now. 

  
  


<><><>

  
  


Quentin wakes up slowly, his mind and body reluctant to leave the warm quiet of sleep. He turns onto his side with every intent of burrowing into his pillow and blanket to sleep some more, but a familiar hand in his hair stops him. 

“Q?” 

That - that’s Eliot’s voice. And he sounds scared. Quentin groans softly and opens his eyes to slits. “It’s… very bright,” he mumbles, his voice a dry croak. But he reaches out, mostly blindly, to Eliot - Eliot, again, just his nickname in that familiar voice, the hand gently stroking through his hair and down to the nape of his neck, is enough for Quentin to know his Eliot is back. 

Well. Not _his_, but he’s only sort of awake and he’s missed Eliot so much he’d thought he might die just from that, so he’s allowed to think in those terms just this once. 

A warm hand wraps around his, Eliot’s skin a little rough against Quentin’s palm as always. But as sure a grip as ever. 

The light dims a great deal, suddenly, what’s left taking on the slightly wavery quality of sunlight through the window, and Quentin realizes Eliot must have turned off the light with his telekinesis. He blinks once, twice, then manages to keep his eyes open. Eliot is sitting up next to him, a laptop balanced on his lap. Quentin squints, and he can’t make out much from this angle but it looks like El was catching up on a TV show or a movie.

They’re both in the hospital, in beds pushed together. Quentin thinks his head was tucked against Eliot’s hip, judging by the angle. He used to sleep like that sometimes in - 

“How… how long…?” 

“Three days,” Eliot says. “Can you sit up?” 

_ Of course I can, _ Quentin thinks, vaguely offended, and then he actually tries to. Turns out that yes, he can, but not easily. His head spins, and he closes his eyes against it, hand tightening on Eliot’s. Then it all settles again, and he cautiously opens his eyes once more. “Oh, OK, that sucked,” he says, or tries to. Apparently, his dry throat has had enough, and all that comes out is a croak.

He sees Eliot make a gesture, and maybe - maybe it should set off alarm bells in his head, because it actually isn’t that unlike some of the Monster’s, but - it doesn’t. Even before he sees the plastic cup float to Eliot’s hand, it doesn’t, because he  _ knows  _ it’s Eliot again. 

“Here,” Eliot says, and Quentin gets the sense El would help him drink it, which, no. So he takes the cup from him with both hands, annoyed at how unsteady he feels. The water isn’t cold but that barely matters when it definitely helps his throat. After a few long sips, he thinks he can manage talking again.

“What happened to me? And how are you, you were bleeding out last time I - and - oh no, I was supposed to help in the Mirror Realm, I, shit -”

“Quentin. Q, hey, stop, calm down,” Eliot says, taking the cup and then taking both of Quentin’s hands in his. Quentin stares at their joined hands. “I’m all right, so are you, and so is everyone else, sweetheart. We need to talk, but that can wait. How are you feeling?” 

“Like I’ve been tenderized,” Quentin admits, thinking of watching Eliot make a show of cooking in the Cottage kitchen the same way he did when making cocktails, and feeling sleepily pleased when the description makes Eliot laugh. 

Eliot doesn’t laugh much over the next few days. He doesn’t join in the lectures from Margo and Julia about Quentin’s reckless behavior either. He also doesn’t seem all that impressed by the apologies Quentin gets for the fact that no one realized he was missing. Quentin can’t blame him there, actually, because he’s not sure how to feel about that either. He’s decided he doesn’t want to be angry, but that just leaves him feeling kind of cold.

Eliot just slips an arm around Quentin’s shoulders and pulls him in close so they can watch movies on the laptop together, which at least makes him feel less cold. Quentin’s not exactly sure why electronics work in the infirmary when they don’t elsewhere on campus, but he decides not to question it too much. Which is more or less the same philosophy he’s applying to Eliot. 

Trouble is, he can feel the other shoe waiting to drop, when it comes to Eliot. 

Which it does, about a week after Quentin wakes up. He and Eliot have both been discharged, and he’s out on the little patio at Kady’s, idly wishing he could still smoke. Unfortunately, even the feel of a cigarette in his mouth reminds him of that night when the Monster made him help sink a body, giddy and cuddly and handsy. So he just leans against the rail and watches the world go by. Even when he hears the screen door slide open, and the telltale thump of Eliot’s cane. 

They’d given him a standard issue wooden cane. Eliot had, for reasons only known to himself but probably relating to the aesthetic, had transfigured it to an elegant black cane with a silver ram’s head handle. A cane Quentin knows all too well, and he tries to tell himself it’s just Eliot knowing what he likes and recreating it. 

But still… 

“What’s up?” he asks. He and Eliot have been spending most of their time together even since they got out, but it’s been… mostly just sitting together among the others, or watching something. Or, once, Quentin reading  _ The Hero and the Crown _ out loud because why not. 

Well, why not is simple, actually - Quentin used to read aloud in their other lifetime, to their son, yes, but also to Eliot, just because it was something pleasant they could share. Still, Quentin is historically terrible at telling Eliot no about things like that, and so he’d caved within, like, ten seconds.

Still, it hasn’t been… personal, between them, in terms of conversation. Even before Eliot joins him at the rail, Quentin can feel that this time’s different. 

“You scared the shit out of me, Q,” Eliot says. “When I realized they’d lost you, when I saw how worn down you were - it scared me.”

“I wasn’t trying to scare anyone. Just get through it.” 

“I know that, Quentin. But - you have to be more careful. I don’t want to lose you.”

“I wasn’t being -” 

“Quentin.” Something in Eliot’s voice makes Quentin turn to face him. Eliot is still staring out at the city, his jaw set, hands clenched white-knuckled on the rail. And Quentin remembers being unable to do more than stand in the infirmary hallway, the taste of almonds suddenly gone from his mouth. And… those dreams… Dreams of dying, and then of talking to Penny. 

_ "And you managed to actually save your own life by taking such bad care of yourself that you passed out before you could die.” _

Ah. Well. “I might have been, um. A little careless.”

“A little. A little!” Eliot snaps, turning to face him. He looks furious. “Quentin, you were this close to being dangerously dehydrated, on the verge of malnutrition, and you were drugging yourself! You hit your head when you passed out, Q, it could have killed you!” 

“I did what I had to do,” Quentin insists, though it’s hard to be firm about it in the face of Eliot’s expression, all rage and pain. “El, I - I wasn’t trying to hurt myself or anything,” he tries to explain. “I just… I just had to keep going. That was all I could - all I could do.” 

“Eating and sleeping are kind of important for that, Q.” 

“I know, but - I felt sick all the time, and the - the Monster, um. Liked me. It would, uh, show up, at night. Not all the time, and it didn’t do anything, I think it just liked waking me up, having my attention.” He is not going to tell Eliot that it would usually wake him up by wrapping around him like a giant evil cat. “Even, um. When it didn’t show up, I couldn’t, couldn’t really sleep. And then we found out about the Sister, then it had the stones and I thought I’d - we’d lost you for good, then Julia was gone too… I had to focus. That’s why I started the potion. I didn’t know what else to do.” 

“Quentin. Why didn’t you tell anyone?” 

Is he - he has to be joking. How can he not know why - Oh, wait. Maybe he’s asking why he didn’t tell anyone about the Monster. “Well, no one could have stopped it, you know? I mean, I was the one it was least likely to hurt.”  _ And even that wasn’t foolproof, _ he manages to bite back at the last moment.

“It tried to_ strangle you_, Q. I only have flashes but I know that happened.” 

“Well, yeah, OK. But the - the thing is, if that had been anyone else it would have done it. With me it was just a scare tactic. That’s what I mean. I didn’t want to discuss something no one could change. Especially if someone tried to help and got hurt, I didn’t want that.” 

“They could have supported you, though,” Eliot says, looking stricken. “You didn’t have to go through this alone. And if they’d known you were struggling, maybe they would’ve kept a closer fucking eye on you and not  _ lost you _ for a day!”

“They were busy,” Quentin says flatly. “Julia had her goddess shit, Margo was in Fillory, 23 hates my guts and Kady thinks I’m annoying at best. Alice - to give her her due, she tried. But I was… too angry with her to care, for a while, and then too numb to really notice.” And they would have asked too many questions that Quentin can’t answer, but he doesn’t mention that part. “I don’t regret doing what I thought I had to. I can’t.” 

“You should,” Eliot says. “For fuck’s sake, Q. I didn’t want you to die getting me back.” 

“And I didn’t want to make it through this if you didn’t!” And - oh. Eliot’s face. He looks as horrified as he did the day Quentin announced he was staying at Blackspire, and Quentin doesn’t - he can’t - 

He turns away, walking to the other end of the patio and trying to breathe. “Look. I know you don’t want - but I’m - you’re still my best friend, OK? Whatever else is - whatever I might - that, it doesn’t matter, El. Or it does, but it’s not, um, not the point.” 

“Quentin.” 

“No. No.” God, he’s still exhausted, this is not a conversation he feels at all ready for. Only, maybe that’s the only time to have it. Still raw and worn down, before he can talk himself out of it. Quentin takes a deep breath, trying to order his thoughts, then turns to face Eliot again, making himself meet those so-familiar eyes, with the right person behind them again.

“I didn’t want to die. That’s not - I went numb, and before that, I was willing to risk dying if it got you back, but I don’t want - I want to rest, I’m tired to my bones and it’s not the kind of tired that knocked me out. But there’s, there’s better ways to rest than, um, eternal rest, so to speak.” That’s what Penny had said, anyway, and Quentin figures he’d know, being dead and all. Assuming that even happened, but he doesn’t usually dream that vividly so he figures the odds aren’t bad. 

Eliot’s expression doesn’t look any less stricken - if anything, he looks even sadder. Damn. All right. “Truthfully, I thought even if I made it through this, if the Monster got a new body, it’d probably just kidnap me again.” 

“I would never let that stand,” Eliot says, his voice low, almost a growl. “Do you understand that, Q? If that had happened I would have followed you anywhere until I brought you home. And if you’d died, I’d fucking follow you there too and tear up the damned Underworld to find you if that’s what it took.” 

Jesus. “You can’t just say shit like that, El.” 

“Why not?” 

And something just. Snaps. Snaps like it did when he dared the Monster to kill him, and Quentin just can’t do this anymore. “Because I’m in love with you, damn it! I’m in love with you and you don’t fucking want me and I know you care as my friend but you can’t - you can’t make declarations like that! You want to know why I didn’t go to anyone? Because they would have asked me why I couldn’t let you go. And I couldn’t tell them, because you told me no, and the only, the only way I knew to respect that was to, to never tell anyone and so I -” 

Eliot closes the short distance between them at as much a rush as he can, and Quentin distantly hears the cane thud to the floor. But he’s not really thinking about that when Eliot’s yanking him in close and kissing him. It’s messy and almost painful, teeth and too-tight hands in hair and the railing digging into Quentin’s back when Eliot pushes him against it.

“Stop. God, baby, please, stop,” Eliot whispers when he pulls back, only just enough to speak. “I’m sorry, Q. I lied to you. I love you, I want this, what we were, can be, whatever that looks like in this life, I want it. I was scared, I fuck up everything that matters and I couldn’t - if I fucked us up, if I lost you. I couldn’t bear that, Q. But I didn’t know I was doing this to you, I knew it would hurt you and I’m so sorry, but not like this.”

Quentin turns his head, hides his face against Eliot’s shoulder. “You broke my heart,” he says, the words muffled. “You - El - you broke me. It was like you fucking divorced me after fifty years, and I couldn’t understand  _ why _ .”

He feels Eliot press a kiss to the side of his head. “I know. I - if you can’t forgive me -” 

“I didn’t say that,” Quentin cuts him off. “I love you. Of course I can forgive you - but you can’t.” He lifts his head, meeting Eliot’s eyes. “You can’t do that to me again. You can’t lie to me like that. I would have done anything to get you back, even thinking you wouldn’t ever love me the same way. Of course I still want what we can be together. But I need you to promise you won’t do that again.” 

Eliot searches his face, and Quentin doesn’t look away. “I can do that - I can try to do that. I get scared when things are real, Q. I don’t know if I’ll slip up, but I will try. But you have to promise to try too. No more letting yourself slip away. I know you can’t help your bad times, I’m not saying you can. I’m saying - come to me, or someone if you can’t take it to me for some reason. Please, just don’t leave me like that.” 

_ Oh. _ Quentin’s heart turns over in his chest. He thinks of all his almost-deaths, thinks of the cool grey elevator. And Penny - he was right, wasn’t he? Quentin  _ doesn’t  _ want to quit like that, not now. 

Look what he would have missed if he had. Eliot in the reddish light of sunset, telling him he loves him, saying he wants the same thing Quentin hasn’t been able to  _ stop  _ wanting. “I can promise to try too,” he tells Eliot, reaching up to brush a stray curl out of his eyes. “If we both try, and we both help each other try, then - then we should be all right, don’t you think?” 

“Yeah,” Eliot whispers, and ducks his head to kiss Quentin again, softer this time, a slow easy kiss for lovers who have all the time in the world. 

They… probably  _ don’t  _ have all the time in the world, all things considered. But it’s nice, to just hold on for a while. 

They have this moment, and they have every moment they can steal in the future. That’s more than enough to be going on with.

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or on Twitter at Fae_Boleyn!


End file.
